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Polaroid, having largely given up on instant photography in 2008, has soldiered on with several products featuring the "Zink" zero-ink printing technology. Its latest product, the Z340, marries a digital camera with an integrated 3x4" Zink printer to create a sort of "digital" Polaroid camera for the 21st century.

While the idea invokes nostalgia for Polaroid's instant cameras of yore, looking much like the Spectra cameras of the late 80s, it retains none of the charm of the old instant photography. The novelty of getting a physical print of a digital photo nearly "instantly" quickly wears off. What you're left with is a fair-to-middling 14-megapixel digital camera with unwieldy ergonomics, poor battery life, and somewhat expensive printing capabilities.

Digital "instant"

At CES 2011 last January, Polaroid gave the first public unveiling of products that resulted from its collaboration with pop mega-star Lady Gaga. Taking on the title of "creative director," Gaga helped design a new 3x4" Zink standalone printer, the GL-10, which was released earlier this year. She also showed off a bizarre pair of sunglasses with a built-in digital camera, as well as a new digital instant camera dubbed the GL-30.

The Polaroid GL30 instant camera prototype shown of at CES 2011.

The Z340 looks like a sort of cheaper version of the GL-30 prototype that Polaroid and Gaga showed us a year ago. While the GL-30 had a retro-future glam style, a large articulated LCD screen, and a sharp, high-quality lens, the Z340 has a simple, all-black design, tiny LCD screen that can only flip up in one direction, and what appears to be a low-end lens paired with a downmarket 14 megapixel sensor.

The "rear" of the Z340 has the large shutter button and all the (mostly useless) camera controls. Here is where you can also load Zink paper.

It still includes the 3x4" Zink printer, but everything else about this camera screams "cheap." The bulky power adapter, the odd mini-USB interface that doesn't seem to match any other camera, and the clunky battery all seem like a product designed to cut every corner. That brings the price to $300—not bad considering the GL-10 printer is $150 by itself, but not exactly inexpensive, either.

Supplied with the Z340 are a USB cable, bulky AC adapter/charger, and a CD-ROM with software you probably won't use. Also included are a hand strap, rechargeable Li-ion battery, and 10 sheets of Zink paper.

Underdeveloped camera

Unfortunately, you can buy much better standalone cameras for $300. The Z340 has a tiny lens which focuses light onto a 14MP sensor. Unsurprisingly, with so many pixels crammed in, the sensor doesn't perform all that well in low light. If you mean to use the camera at parties—probably one of the most popular uses of instant cameras back in the day—you'll have to rely on the built-in flash that is inexplicably positioned right next to the lens. That design decision practically guarantees your guests will have unsightly red-eye and unflattering lighting in every picture. Given that digital cameras don't have the same design constraints of film-based cameras, I see no reason why the lens and flash couldn't have been moved to opposite ends of the front of the Z340.

The front of the Z340 evokes the design of long-since discontinued Spectra cameras, with a large lens opening, flash, and slot for prints.

Other design decisions make for a frustrating shooting experience. The camera has a zoom feature, unlike pretty much every previous Polaroid instant camera, but it appears to be digital-only. In other words, it digitally crops the 14MP image. If you're sticking with the built-in printer, a small amount of zoom won't be noticeable, but crank it in too close and your pics will be a pixelated mess.

The menus and UI for the camera are also needlessly complicated (the same could be said of most digital cameras these days) and in some cases, difficult to use. Switching focus, flash, and even ISO settings require a lot of button pushes. In our experience, sometimes settings didn't take and had to be reset. The camera is also a bit slow, so the two factors combined can make for a lot of missed shots. The instant cameras you might remember from your childhood had a button for the flash and a button to take a picture, which lent itself well to capturing the moment. The same just can't be said for the Z340.

Popping up the LCD helps framing, but forces the user to use an unsteady grip.

Finally, we found the camera's ergonomics to be fairly poor. There's no optical finder of any kind; you have to rely on the LCD screen for framing. Here you have two options—flush against the nearly horizontal backside of the camera, or flipped up and facing you, making it hard to hold steady. We think a simple old-school optical viewfinder would have made the camera easier to use, though it would make the digital zoom and other features impossible to use. (Maybe that would actually be an improvement, though.)

Zero ink

Once you do get some shots you like, however, printing is fairly straightforward. Hit the print button, and hit it again to send the image to the built-in Zink printer. It takes about 45 seconds to print out—not exactly "instant," but that's faster than the 60 to 90 seconds or so 600 film used to take to fully develop. We did run into occasions where it seemed as though the printer would refuse to print—the firmware for the camera just seems buggy overall—but trying again always seemed to fix the problem.

A successful print from the Z340.

One important way in which the Z340 differs from older Polaroid cameras is that it's not very practical to use the camera while it is printing. With the SX-70, 600, or Spectra series cameras, the print spit out right away, and you could continue to shoot while you wanted for it to develop. You can continue to use the Z340 while the integrated Zink printer is working, but the print might spit out while you are trying to take another picture. Like the rest of the camera, the full experience doesn't seem to be well thought out.

The Zink printer is actually the best part of the camera in our view. Loading fresh paper was a little hit or miss in; an included card that is presumably meant to let the camera know that it is out of paper is supposed to be inserted, but we couldn't make any prints when it was. Instead, we tossed in a stack of 10 sheets without the extra card and went to town. At a family get-together, everyone agreed it was fun having prints of pictures to take home.

This Zink "smartsheet" ultimately proved useless for us.

Several prints from a family get-together. Making prints is fun, but using the camera can be frustrating.

The Zink paper sells for $20 for three individual 10 packs of 3x4" sheets. That might be a little on the pricy side for some users, but on the upside you don't need to keep track of ink ribbons or cartridges. Also, the paper is smudge-proof and tear-resistant.

Pop some Zink 3x4" paper in the back, and you're ready to go.

One side benefit of the Z340 is that since it is a digital camera, you can download the pictures and use them later—you're not limited to 3x4" Zink prints. However, the image quality is, as we mentioned, fair-to-middling. They should be fine for posting online—images from the Z340 are at least as good as images from most mobile phones—but you may not want to print them out at a large size and frame it on the mantle. For those kind of images, the Z340 just isn't the right tool.

Get in close for decent snapshots with the built-in flash.

Low light capture is really hit or miss, and the 14MP sensor is mostly overkill for most snapshots.

Up close, you can see how the 14MP sensor makes soft, noisy images in less-than-ideal lighting.

The fun doesn't last

Overall, the Z340 is fun, at least for a short while, but the limitations of the camera and its awkward ergonomics are just frustrating. The battery life is short—you can print maybe 20 pictures before it needs recharged, and there's no charge indicator when it's plugged in. Furthermore, the battery charges in the camera, so while it's recharging you can't really use it to take pictures. We suspect you could get an extra battery or two and have them charged before any important event, but it seems more hassle than it's worth.

The built-in Zink printer is great for its purposes, and we admit to having fun printing pictures out right away. If quick printing is what you are after, though, you may find the stand-alone GL-10 printer a better solution. That printer can work over Bluetooth with most mobile phones, which most of your party guests will likely have anyway (though it still doesn't seem to work with the iPhone—a limitation either Polaroid or Apple should remedy ASAP).

The good

Integrated Zink printer is fast, if not exactly "instant."

Images are also saved as JPEGs which can be downloaded and used later.